That's not it at all. The trouble here is it's even a niche within a niche. Only certain Sci-Fi fans seem to be enjoying it. I don't know anyone who's seen it and enjoyed it, other than those on this board. Which is fine if it's a small budget, but £250m isn't small.

The politics inside a studio are self-defeating at the studio level, but I suppose they help those individuals involved.

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I think it's like that at most, if not all, studios. I'd point to Warner Brothers for a perfect example of that. Each department (much less each division) actively works against all other departments. The television and movie divisions are actively at war with each other, and simply don't work together ... ever.

jmsnews.com has an archive of J. Michael Straczynski's posts over the years. Search for Warner or WB. It's fascinating.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) was a fairly decent film despite the cheesy title and cost £1.2M to make - does anyone know if it turned a profit?

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At this point it probably has, but judging by some of the remarks on the audio commentary on the DVD/Blu-Ray, it wasn't a huge hit at the box office when it was first released. I can't find any figures online, though.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) was a fairly decent film despite the cheesy title and cost £1.2M to make - does anyone know if it turned a profit?

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At this point it probably has, but judging by some of the remarks on the audio commentary on the DVD/Blu-Ray, it wasn't a huge hit at the box office when it was first released. I can't find any figures online, though.

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I'm guessing it didn't make enough as there weren't any sequels. The ending makes it look as though either they ran out of money in production or they were expecting it to have a follow-up.

Anyway, regarding John Carter, I expect Disney will break even eventually but it beats me how anyone can hope for a sequel with the budget that would be required to match the effects in the first outing.

Indeed, there was apparently early talk of a sequel called "Robinson Crusoe and the Invisible Galaxy," but that was scrapped after the film failed to light the box office on fire. (Just found this in a Tom Weaver interview book)

Warlord of Mars, to avoid confusion, if JC is the main character. If they wanted to title it Princess of Mars, then Dejah should be the main character, which would be fine by me but that's not what they did.

And let's face if, for Disney to release a movie called Princess of Mars will lead most people to assume it's an animated fairy tale. Don't make the mistake of assuming the audience knows anything about the source material, because they don't.

Why make their jobs tougher than they need to be, by creating a misleading impression that they'll have to spend millions on countering, while at the same time spending millions more trying to sell the movie? Call it Warlord of Mars and focus on selling people the epic romantic story of a tragic Civil War veteran who gets his chance at love and redemption on an amazing alien world.

Warlord of Mars tells you it's an action movie ("war"); about a guy fighting for power ("lord"); it's sci fi ("Mars"); and it's kind of retro ("warlord") but that can be cool. The title doesn't get "romance" or "redemption" in there, so those elements should be the focus of the marketing campaign. And there you have the whole package.